Ba-Dee-Ya: Nigel Hofileña Remembers The 21st Of September
By Mikael Rizada Borres
Portions of the interviews were conducted in Cebuano (Bisaya).
All Cebuano quotes have been translated into English for clarity and length.
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“Do you remember the 21st night of September?
Love was changing the minds of pretenders
while chasing the clouds away.”
“September” (1978) - Earth, Wind, & Fire
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According to Nigel Hofileña, his friends regard him as a bona fide matchmaker of love, paving the way for hearts to find each other. By Nigel’s account, he has succeeded in matching four couples. As of December 12, 2023, the day of my interview with Nigel, all the couples he says he had a hand in creating are, apparently, still together.
Nigel recounted to me one of his matchmaking attempts, setting the scene with him and a classmate drinking at Edsnath’s Payag-payag, a popular spot for drinks near the university they attend. Nigel then invited a friend he had met during his high school days, telling her she might click with his classmate. “On that night, after we had been drinking at Payag, we went to Trademark (a nightclub in Cebu),” Nigel shared. “And next thing I [knew], they were making out.”
Nigel reports, with pride, that the couple entered a committed relationship and have been “going strong” for around a year since that night.
When asked what makes his matchmaking skills work (so far), Nigel guesses that his foolproof idea of pairing somewhat contrasting personalities is the key to his success. If one possesses childlike vivacity, then Nigel may choose to have his friend meet someone whose maturity can steady that vivacity. “I feel like opposites [attract] in a sense that they have enough similarities to get them going, but enough [differences] to keep them interested in each other.”
However, for all his expertise and skill in playing the role of Cupid for his friends, Nigel fails to apply the same expertise and skill for his benefit. If he’s so adept at bringing people to get with each other, why can’t he get with another guy?
I told Nigel, “I’m saying this as a polite– not ‘polite,’ but I just genuinely think that you’re handsome, you’re in leadership–”
“Real!” Nigel responded.
“You’re in IE (industrial engineering), which is not easy to do,” I continued. “And yet, you’re still single.”
I pressed further, “Why is that?”
Leading Up To The 21st Of September
Before Nigel and September Boy (his second and latest ex-boyfriend) became an official couple, they pinned the date of when they would become exclusive: September 21st.
Nigel said the Earth, Wind, and Fire’s “September” became a “thing” for them, hence the choice.
It was only a matter of time until they, both senior high school students, could call each other “boyfriend.” Nigel said it was all for “formalities” at that point. They had everything but two: the label and the actual exclusivity.
While waiting for the day, they continued to share moments of affection. Nigel reminisced about travelling home with September Boy from school, holding onto the belief that he could demonstrate his ocean-deep affection for his then-soon-to-be-boyfriend by spending those hours commuting together.
However, flash forward to many days of walking home side-by-side later, sometime before September 21st, Nigel found himself seated somewhere in SM City Cebu, listening to his then-boyfriend, who was in tears.
While crying, September Boy revealed to Nigel that the night before they met up on that day at SM, a guy had gone to September Boy’s house, laid down in a bed with him, and kissed him. (Nigel would specify that the guy may have made the first move by pecking his then-boyfriend’s lips, but he also prefaced that the full details of the story escaped his mind.)
Nevertheless, peck or not, the lips that were pressed against September Boy’s lips – they did not belong to Nigel.
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Under the strong influence of youthful infatuation, senior high school student Nigel kept rationalizing his then-boyfriend’s propensity to talk to men who were acting upon their clear romantic interests in September Boy. Nigel initially didn’t feel any sort of jealousy as he had already gotten assurances from September Boy that he was only replying to those suitors to validate his being.
A thought comes to mind, at least for me: Why does the then-boyfriend need to receive validation from other guys? He’s already got a boyfriend to give him what he wants.
“He kept on saying that he needed it for validation, they would compliment him and he’s insecure as a person,” Nigel said as he recalled September Boy’s explanation.
Nigel, when asked why September Boy couldn’t get the same validation from him, admits he has no clear understanding of what his now ex-boyfriend’s precise reason may be. Nigel showered September Boy with the affection Nigel thought his boyfriend deserved, posting pictures of his boyfriend on his social media and showering him with words of kind affirmation. “I really don’t understand, until now, why it wasn’t enough for him.”
In hindsight, Nigel recognizes his failure to see the obvious red flag his ex was waving in front of him. But Nigel would not have seen the flag, for love makes even men with 20/20 vision blurry-eyed.
The September Boy’s time with another man the night before the SM meetup grounded Nigel to the truth about their relationship. Before the evening in September Boy’s house, the guy he kissed insisted they see each other. “And he [September Boy] agreed,” Nigel noted.
Nigel, feeling overwhelmed, could not comprehend the story or the situation he sat for. First: he didn’t understand why the other person was crying and not himself.
When September Boy told him he and the guy were lying down in bed, he became more bewildered. “That doesn’t make sense. You could have just pushed him away. Why would you lay down in place?" Nigel said.
“I tried to rationalize it, [thinking] it was an accident,” he continued, “but how do you even accidentally kiss someone?”
Never Always Was A Cloudy Day
Even after confessing his grave fault to Nigel, his then-boyfriend continued entertaining other guys and defending himself with the validation explanation. The kiss in the bed became fodder for fights with Nigel, and the supply only grew as September Boy replied to more men, leading to more discombobulating quarrels and cloudy days they could never chase away.
After several endeavours to endure many cloudy days, the two decided to break up in May. Nigel then travelled to his relatives’ home in Palawan, embarking on a three-week rural stay. Limited access to electricity and the internet in the area where he resided allowed him to disconnect from the world and reflect on his relationship with September Boy.
A week after the break-up and Nigel’s stay in Palawan, Nigel and September Boy started texting each other; the latter initiated the conversation. Following several messages, September Boy told Nigel while on a phone call: “‘OK, we can go back together.’
Nigel would only devote himself to the idea of reuniting if September Boy told Nigel “what happened” while they were broken up.
September Boy admitted to hooking up with another person the day after he and Nigel broke up. “And it was also a guy he told me not to worry about. [...] It was one of the guys he was chatting with.”
Nigel recalled, “He likes this show, and I don’t like that show. He had someone to talk to about it, so that’s why they were chatting at first.”
Although September Boy hooked up after the start of the breakup, answers to salient questions remain elusive. Did anything romantic or sexual happen between September Boy and his hookup before the May breakup? Why did he get even more entangled with someone Nigel was not supposed to be worried about?
One of the most important questions to Nigel would be a variation of: Why did September Boy hook up with someone the day after they broke up?
On the first day after the breakup, Nigel tried to reel himself from the devastation of the end of their relationship. Despite the poor cell phone signal in rural Palawan, he tried calling his ex the next day, only to later discover that September Boy wasn’t picking up the phone because he was spending time with another man. “So I was so angry,” Nigel told me when sharing how he took the admission.
To borrow from “The Story Of Us,” Nigel was dying to know if the breakup killed September Boy the way it was killing him.
But even when Nigel felt like September Boy crossed the lines, he went back to Cebu, met up with September Boy to hash out the problems in their relationship, and got back together – but “not officially.” This meant they would go on dates and see each other but refrain from calling each other “boyfriend” again.
When asked via Instagram after the interview as to why he decided to come back to that relationship, he said he wasn’t sure why he did so, stating: “I guess I was feeling crazy.”
September Boy’s interactions with other men kept plaguing their relationship, eroding any shreds of trust and compassion left for each other.
After months of trying to reconcile (from May – when they parted and came back together – to July), and after only eight months of being in a romantic relationship, Nigel and September Boy broke up for the second and final time.
Ba-Du-Du, Ba-Du-Du (Trauma From The Twink)
“July was when we officially broke up,” Nigel remembered. “No contact. I really cut him off. I was the one who cut it off with him everywhere.” In Grade 12, he “coped” with the emotions attached to his July breakup by ushering in his new era of nightclubs and house parties.
“I think we met up one time to… you know,” Nigel said before making hand gestures – specifically the clapping of hands. What Nigel meant to convey was that he and September Boy had post-break-up sex.
Nowadays, however, he sprints from every chance of seeing or hearing his second ex-boyfriend in any way and at all costs. He has fuck-all for the young man who broke his Grade 12 heart.
“I have something,” I said before asking my question to Nigel. “What would you say to your second ex-boyfrien-”
“Nothing,” Nigel interjected before I finished the last word.
“Nothing,” I repeated.
“I don’t want to talk to him. [...] I blocked him everywhere!”
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Since breaking up with September Boy, Nigel dipped his toes in all kinds of love-life experiences.
He dated a guy he ghosted after realizing how clingy the person was; the guy took Nigel’s friendly “I love you” too seriously, which spooked Nigel.
He then received a confession from a secret admirer. Nigel got a small note with an incomplete phone number; the note included the phrase, “Guess the last number.” Nigel didn’t bother playing along since he thought it was too much of a “hassle.”
He also met someone he now considers his “TOTGA,” or “the one that got away.” He and his TOTGA bonded over their dreams of living outside the Philippines and the weird social limbo that comes with being gay, in which the boys didn’t want them because they were not straight, and the girls didn’t want then because they were guys.
Through all that period, however, phantoms of a trepidatious past relationship – defined by Nigel’s naïveté and puzzlement pitted against September Boy’s recklessness and inconsideration – haunt him. Whenever he wanted to be with someone, he kept setting the clear boundary of the relationship being strictly for fun, leaving little to no room for the budding of a deep romance.
If he was hooking up with someone, the need to indicate the parameters was not necessary as there was an automatic understanding in the hookup culture that their encounter was purely for momentary pleasure.
“Maybe the trauma with twinks is just that bad.”
Those eight months with September Boy instilled in Nigel a reluctance to, in a romantic sense, jump and fall into someone. To answer the question of why he does not have a boyfriend, Nigel told me: “I think I have a commitment issue. [...] I didn’t realize this for a long time. I thought, at first, I just liked fun and hookups, stuff like that.”
His love life after September Boy stands as an accidental legacy caused by hurt inflicted from way back when. And like pestering glitter dusted across one’s skin, or the heavy metal genre, or houses guests whose welcome has been overstayed, that trepidatious past – whether warranted or not – lingered in the form of Nigel’s hesitation to commit. Although Nigel no longer feels the aches from that time, his actions signal his fears of feeling it again.
And We’ll Say Ba-Dee-Ya
After years of singlehood resulting from a scarring love affair and an eclectic hodge-podge of romantic experiences, Nigel is recently trying to open himself up to the chance to once again share moments of affection with someone he truly loves and cares for.
He downloaded Tinder and Bumble (he calls them the “proper dating apps”), paid for a Bumble premium subscription, and reminded himself in constant repetition: look for connections not rooted in short-lasting lust but in serious intimacy.
“I chatted with a lot of guys (almost 10 guys, to be a bit more concise), but nothing much,” he remembered, further recounting how most Bumble premium users he was talking to were living in Manila, over 300 miles away from Lapu-Lapu-residing Nigel.
Successful or not in his pursuit of a relationship through the “proper apps,” Nigel had to shift from his preference of meeting others through mutual friends and classroom hangouts to plunge himself into the scene of swiping left or right on overpolished digital profiles and partaking in shallower-than-a-kiddie-pool text exchanges.
In the end, however, Nigel still longs to meet his person “naturally,” envisioning that they meet in a “romantic-vibe film way.”
“I don’t want to shit-talk on people who met their significant other online,” Nigel made clear. “It’s OK, it’s your thing. But my thing isn’t that.”
“I feel like I have this thing where, if it’s a hookup or not serious, it’s OK [to meet them] online. If I meet them online, it’s whatever, it’s not that serious. But if it’s serious, I feel like I have this idea in my head, that I want it to be someone I met organically.”
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In the search for something greater, Nigel discovered what romantic love ought to look and feel like, for he never learned such lessons with September Boy. For all the grapplings and perplexions during their eight months together, he took the trauma with him, but no takeaways.
When asked for his definition of love, Nigel joked how he lost any idea of love he had because of his prolonged singledom. “Can I say ‘I don’t know’?” he asked me. “I feel like I haven’t experienced love properly yet.”
“You felt like your previous relationships weren’t proper?” I asked.
“No,” Nigel answered.
“What made them improper?”
“I feel like, with the right person, yeah, that’s when you know what love is.”
I asked another question: “Do you want to know what love is?”
“Yeah, but I’m taking my time,” he said.
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Whenever Nigel explained anything profound during our interview, he did so without any conviction or certainty in his tone. He ended many of his points and stories with “You get me right?” and “Do I make sense?” as a way to seek confirmation that I understood him.
If anything, the constant need for him to receive guarantees is the great consequence of his last official relationship. As Nigel takes his time and learns the bits of lessons, what he needs from love and his future loved one, he realizes, is assurance.
“What’s your love language?” I asked Nigel.
“I don’t know… that’s what I’m confused about. When you ask about their love language, is that asking how you want to be loved or how you love?”
“Ay, let’s start with what you give.”
“I think quality time. I like spending time with people,” Nigel answered. “It’s like being in the comfort of someone. If I’m giving love, I just want to be there for them. I want them to know that I’m there.”
“What do you want to receive?”
“Receive? I think affirmation, mostly,” he replied.
“Why do you need affirmation?”
“Well, after everything, I just want to be sure that the person’s… there.”
And that’s Nigel’s love language. You get him, right?
Nigel and Mikael conducted an in-person interview on Monday, December 12th, 2023.
Recommended Song: September (slowed + reverb) - Earth, Wind & Fire
